Jon Sutz's letter in your March 10 edition ["Don't blame 'No Child"], in which he laments the "anti-American, anti-freedom" notion that all Americans deserve protection from starvation, exposure, or suffering from easily treated medical ailments reminds me of Patrick Henry's words on the floor of our own Virginia General Assembly (then the House of Burgesses) in 1765: "If this be treason, make the most of it."

Sutz asserts that only a Communist would believe that all people living in the nearly limitless bounty of 21st-century America should have reasonable rights to basic health care, food and housing, which I think calls into serious question Sutz's own understanding of government, not to mention his ethical standing– and his grip on reality.

Like so many conservatives who gloat about how much they love America and then doggedly pursue policies that hurt actual Americans, Sutz should reconsider whether citizens' "rights" should really be restricted to the 10 things James Madison and his fellow wealthy, landowning elites in the 18th century cared to put down on paper.

America in the 21st century is the wealthiest, most prosperous nation on earth– but what does that prosperity mean if we still allow the least fortunate in our society to live (and die) in squalor?